Pluvious

Pluvious's Journal

October 8, 2025

The "star corridor sequence" was an historical first...

By pure chance, I took a Fine Arts class at UCLA taught by the filmmaker responsible for that.

He told us all about the process (he was John Whitney, Sr. - a descendant of the 1700's inventor Eli Whitney - known as the "Grandfather of computer animation" - his son, John Jr. was one of the people behind the original Tron) was it was all filmed with the aid of mechanical step motors and a camera on a track. He called the process a slit-scan technique, using time exposures while the camera would slide along its track - building layers of the colored light streaks one from at a time into each frame of film.

Amazing class lol

June 6, 2025

LMFAO - George Conway: "We have the perfect social media post"

LMAO !!

I used to follow her on the old Twitter, she's been caustic and brilliant for years...
( this is a screenshot from her Blue Sky post )

A few replies...

I’m profoundly embarrassed for my once great country. We have become a Jerry springer episode. Those who would do us harm are licking their lips.
I have been giggling along with everyone else about the jokes and memes. However, there will be no winner here. Just destruction.

Ref:
https://x.com/gtconway3d/status/1930894884287676656

Edit to add AOC's response: "The girls are fighting, aren't they?"
https://x.com/gtconway3d/status/1930779050626412568

May 16, 2025

Corrected - was: The FED bought $43.8 billion in U.S. treasuries this week...

I took a harder look at this "report," and concluded it was misleading at best, and exploitive and manipulative at worst.

The recent auction activities of the FED have to attributed to roll-overs, as per their official position on such actions:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/opolicy/operating_policy_250319

This is what I love about DU, so many keen and patient minds here, sharing and helping each other

Sorry for the confusion friends.

Original post:
--
"The buyer of last resort" has just acted, again.

Why ?

Foreign holdings (aka loans to us) of our debt is the lowest since the 90's

Domestic demand is down

Gold is at all time highs

Even bitcoin has been over $100,000 for a week now
( and Blackrock has been accumulating it non stop all month )

This is not going well

#MAGA !

Ref: https://deepnewz.com/economics/u-s-fed-buys-8-8-billion-30-year-bonds-totaling-43-6-billion-this-week-amid-qe-0ddb91b3

March 25, 2025

Today's Facepalm: Art Of The Crypto Grift

Some context...

When the one billion trumpcoins were created, 800m were allocated to two trump controlled companies, 200m were offered for purchase (bt a Trump controlled company, which received the "Initial Coin Offering" sales revenue) at $10 a token - that tranche sold out very fast (most buys went to already prepared and positioned insiders and parties unknown, ready to resell them to the expected pool of rubes who'd be excited to get in on the action at ANY price ASAP); market trading ran it up quickly to $75 (the rubes were so happy, many having drained their savings or just borrowed, not wanting to miss out on a SURE thing), then it crashed back down when the rubes ran dry of cash.

Then some time past.

Then America's President posted this (on his social media platform) :

Its trading price promptly jumped 15%

The Grift Grinds On,
The Grift Grinds On.

La dee dawdy dee,
La dee dawdy da.

#AmericaTheConned

February 28, 2025

Today's Facepalm moment - What could possibly go wrong? (Musk seeking Air Traffic Controllers after firing them)

Putin and his drinking buddies must all just sit around and take turns reading these snippets
from America out loud before taking their vodka shots

#LaughingStock

December 10, 2024

Regarding Star Trek's Transporter: "It's not a transporter, it's a murder machine!!"

The philosophical implications of such a key system, isn't itself quite interesting, and certainly begs the question about two humans have souls or not, and how that mechanism itself would work. But it seems to me, that the point brought up in the video is quite valid, if you are disassemble, you no longer exist, unless there's some magic metaphysical continuity that steps in and preserves the actual you.

There is a fascinating book by David Brinn, called The Kiln People, which tackles this concept from a different angle: making temporary clones of yourself; then (from the first perspective narration) waking up as one of these freshly created clones, and then realizing you're only a clone - not the original, and dealing with that depressing revelation.

I've often pondered Trek's fictitious design concept and arrived at the same conclusion.

Modern sci-fi, would've used some kind of quantum mechanism to instantaneously relay the
original disassembled matter to the destination, in such a fashion that it would self-reassemble upon arrival,
rather than reconstructing it from local materials at the destination, thus essentially preserving the original organics.

Which begs the question for the Star Trek design...
What if the destination doesn't have any local matter to use for the reconstruction ?

And what mechanism is in place at the target destination, to receive the reassembly instructions,
acquire the local matter, and perform the reconstruction ? What kind of receiver is handling that transmitted
signal from the transporter ?

Obviously NONE !!

It just makes no sense from a logistical perspective !

🤔

September 25, 2024

David Bowie and David Gilmour perform Comfortably Numb at The Royal Albert Hall (2006)

Absolutely mesmerizing

To have been there in the audience, that night...

What a gift to humanity these two gentlemen have been

July 29, 2024

Excellent message of hope from historian Heather Cox Richardson

She is an American Treasure

Relentlessly trying to teach and educate us about the lessons of history,
and how they measure up to the present and help understand the options ahead

( the whole entry is well worth the read )

... That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.

But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once.

At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime.

In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/july-28-2024?

July 8, 2024